But why should India be talking to the Taliban in the first place? There is no love lost there. India will never forget or forgive the humiliation to which the Taliban subjected it in the IC-814 hijack, notes Shekhar Gupta.

If the BJP wins by getting Hindu voters to consolidate, its opponents can't beat it by bundling together the Muslims and some of the 'others', observes Shekhar Gupta.

Mr Modi and Mr Shah will need him if they want to win UP again in 2022 and India in 2024. This signals a Yogi Adityanath-sized change in BJP politics, even under Mr Modi, Shekhar Gupta.

Congress is the only other horse in the race for national power, never mind how distant. Narendra Modi and Amit Shah know better than to take the Congress lightly, observes Shekhar Gupta.

Triumphalism, premature declaration of victory meant no one checked if India had enough vaccines, oxygen, remdesivir, bringing us back to a crisis where we need foreign aid after four decades, asserts Shekhar Gupta.

This is a national leadership gone so wrong that India's most powerful prime minister in four decades has personally taken charge of medical oxygen shortages, observes Shekhar Gupta.

Flurry of economic reform suggests Modi realises his muscular nationalism script is getting jaded. Chances are he'll try for economic recovery but stick to what's worked so far, observes Shekhar Gupta.

'Modi-Shah have understood the risks their cynical mixing of domestic political motivations with strategic national interests was soon going to become counterproductive asserts Shekhar Gupta.

'The picture only looks worse from where Bajwa sits.' 'He sees a domineering India to the east, an unravelling Afghanistan and a complex Iran to the west, an overbearing China on the north and a US which is no longer an ally,' observes Shekhar Gupta.

On all key issues, Congress is MIA, sighs Shekhar Gupta.

India must break out of this strategic triangulation between China and Pakistan. We need to settle our issues with one of the two, notes Shekhar Gupta.

Not all change is good, but this one is, applauds Shekhar Gupta.

The Modi government is notoriously honest about one fact: It does not listen to economists, observes Shekhar Gupta.

This crisis requires political sophistication and governance skills. This BJP has neither, observes Shekhar Gupta.

There is a vocal constituency of educated, well-to-do, articulate Indian elites who would rather go with the idea that too much democracy is a liability. That India needs a spell of benevolent dictatorship. Of course, they have never lived under one, points out Shekhar Gupta.

In politics, if your objective is only winning elections, just Chanakya neeti might do. For governance you need both, Chanakya neeti and Ram Rajya. You can neither beat up the farmers into submission, nor dismiss them as 'Khalistanis', asserts Shekhar Gupta.

Pranabda hasn't given us any indication of the tough period when he realised Sonia Gandhi had decided to give the presidency not to him, but to then vice-president Hamid Ansari. He wrested the presidency from her, and handed her the biggest defeat of her UPA years, observes Shekhar Gupta.

At some stage this fall in the quality of life will begin to hurt anybody's popularity, observes Shekhar Gupta.

The Sikhs love a good fight, and that's what the Modi government has given them.

Khadim Hussain Rizvi is now gone. But the mass appeal of fundamentalism among Pakistan's burgeoning, young, illiterate, unemployed and angry population isn't, observes Shekhar Gupta.